A SMALL TOWN'S PRIDE IN ITS PAST.
The visitor to the Cotswold town of Northleach who makes the mistake of calling it a village is likely to be told that it is "an ancient town and borough". In this tart correction lies an indication of the pride which the older townspeople take in the knowledge that 500 years ago Northleach was a centre of the wool trade and the babble of many tongues was heard in its streets.
Northleach is not representative of a declining town in the sense that many have proved themselves to be: the population has not been drawn away elsewhere in the wake of new industries; it is rather a town that has undergone a deep and abiding change in character.
This week the change is underlined by the launching of yet another appeal - this time on a countrywide basis - for funds to restore its magnificent fifteenth century church of St Peter and Paul. The church was mainly constructed in 1458 with the aid of money provided by a wealthy wool merchant of the district.
Northleach has wealthy merchants no longer; the parishioners work on the farms and in factories and, having responded to a call for more than £5000 in the past five years, they have now learnt that it will take £20,000 to £30,000 in the next 15 years to keep their monument to past glory from crumbling.
OLD HOUSES
Northleach nestles comfortably in a valley through which trickles a small stream. It retains many of its old buildings; the wool houses whose top storyes overhang the streets, the gabled almshouses and charming cottages flush with the roadway, but the days when the new wool clippings were shown at the wool fairs and "the speech of every European country could be heard in the streets as eager buyers thronged them - and left their money behind" are remote.
Today the town is split from end to end by the shattering roar of heavy traffic on the main A40 road between Oxford and Cheltenham. Many residents travel 16 miles to the Smiths clock factory at Whitney, and the daughters of Northleach hop on the buses bound for shops and offices in Cheltenham. The youth with ambition moves away.
There is no restless rowdyism in Northleach. Its 80 or so young people are remarkably well behaved, even though their only entertainment in the town is Guides or badminton or the local drama group., and they must go to Cheltenham for anything livlier.
There is a magistrates court, located along with the police station where once the prison stood, but the cases that pass through it are largely offending motorists from out of town. Drunkenness is almost unknown.
HANDFUL OF SHOPS
In the nineteenth century Northleach boasted several small industries of its own. There were two blacksmiths, a brewery and a factory making candles from the fat of sheepskins. Today it has only the handful of local shops and two small builders firms. The population was declining until the war, after which a group of council houses was built to accommodate a hundred or so people relocated from camps and rural areas.
The rural distric council has set up a committee to consider bringing some sort of light industry to Northleach to keep the young people from moving away and to provide work for some of the women. This town is divided over the value of this, as many feel it would destroy the atmosphere.
At present, Northleach refurbishes its population from those who work in Cheltenham or similar centres close by but do not wish to live there. The Vicar, the Rev. J. Leslie Ward, who has been in the parish for little more than a year, commented that he had never had a congregation with so rapid a turnover. One piece of restoration done to the church proved incorrect because there were not enough people who could remember how it had been originally.
- It is to be hoped that the memory of Northleach's past is not likewise slipping away.